The Spice Table Restaurant | Los Angeles, CAhttp://www.thespicetable.com
Fri, 24 Jan 2014 20:16:25 +0000en-UShourly1Death by Train – The Spice Table’s Last Supperhttp://www.thespicetable.com/2014/01/14/death-by-train-the-spice-tables-last-supper/
http://www.thespicetable.com/2014/01/14/death-by-train-the-spice-tables-last-supper/#commentsTue, 14 Jan 2014 23:27:30 +0000adminhttp://www.thespicetable.com/?p=1034The Spice Table served its last supper December 31, 2013. The Metro Transportation Authority (MTA) will be demolishing our beautiful and storied brick building to make way for a shiny new underground subway station. We are still in the process of looking for a suitable relocation site in Downtown or adjacent for the rebirth of The Spice Table.

In the meantime, Kim & I are overjoyed that we are teaming up with Josh & Zoe (Rustic Canyon, Huckleberry, Milo & Olive, and Sweetrose Creamery) to open a restaurant in Santa Monica during summer 2014. We’re still working through the details of the new restaurant, but the food will be influenced by the flavors of Southeast Asia and the culinary heritages of Kim and myself.

Regarding the closing of The Spice Table, I’ve already gone through the gamut of emotions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Kim and I opened The Spice Table with no expectations beyond sharing the flavors of Southeast Asia with as many people as possible. The response to what we were cooking and the environment we created exceeded what we ever hoped for. Your support of The Spice Table has helped me grow as a person and a Chef. I hope that The Spice Table has added to the diverse culinary landscape of Los Angeles, expanding the dialogue of Asian cuisine beyond simply Chinese, Japanese, or Korean food. In whatever direction or form The Spice Table takes, I am honored to be a part of something that my staff and I are proud of.

]]>http://www.thespicetable.com/2014/01/14/death-by-train-the-spice-tables-last-supper/feed/0Interview: Chef Bryant Ng (The Spice Table)http://www.thespicetable.com/2013/06/27/interview-chef-bryant-ng-the-spice-table/
http://www.thespicetable.com/2013/06/27/interview-chef-bryant-ng-the-spice-table/#commentsThu, 27 Jun 2013 21:52:55 +0000adminhttp://www.thespicetable.com/?p=1011Chef Bryant Ng is an L.A. native who attended UCLA and consulted for biotech and pharmaceutical companies before his interest in food overtook his life. He clocked serious time in the kitchens of restaurants like Campanile, Daniel and Pizzeria Mozza before leaving to showcase Singaporean and Vietnamese flavors with wife Kim at The Spice Table in Little Tokyo. His efforts earned acknowledgement from FOOD & WINE as a Best New Chef, and he continues to rack up national press. Ng’s also involved in the World Streetfood Congress and Chefs Club by FOOD & WINE, which just launched its third year at The St. Regis Aspen. We met at The Spice Table on May 23, and Ng explained his background and approach over a beer. Craftsman, of course.

Did you always plan to become a chef?

No.

What other occupations did you consider?

I’m Asian, so I was going to be a doctor. Being the good Asian son, I went to UCLA and I studied Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology. It’s a mouthful. I loved it, though. I absolutely loved it, and the intent was that I was either going to go into medicine or I would go into the business aspects of medicine. That’s actually what happened. When I graduated, I was a consultant for biotech and pharmaceutical companies, of all things. Then somewhere along on the line, I realized that’s not what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. So that’s when I started to introspect and think about what I really love to do. I’ve always loved to cook. My parents and grandparents owned restaurants in Los Angeles, so I grew up in that environment.

They did, or they do?

They did. They’re both closed now. My grandparents owned a place called Bali Hai, and it was a Polynesian Cantonese restaurant in Santa Monica. I still have a postcard of their restaurant. My parents had an American Chinese restaurant called Wok Way. This was in the Valley, in Northridge. I lived out in Northridge across from CSUN over there. I still remember my brother and I peeling shrimp and washing dishes and peeling bean sprouts and that sort of thing. I love doing that, but do I really want to cook for a living? I don’t know. I’ve never really worked in a professional kitchen at that point. I love to eat, I kind of know what it’s like in a kitchen. I helped out when I was a kid. I’m more business minded, so maybe I want to be front of the house, or maybe I want to do more of the business aspects. Maybe I want to be a “restaurateur,” whatever that even means.

I decided, “Let me explore this cooking thing.” I looked at the shortest courses…I feel like I’m behind everyone. All of these kids in culinary school, they’ve been in there since they were 18 years old and I was 24 at the time. “Oh, I’m way behind everybody. I need to start working in kitchens.” If I went to school, it would almost legitimize to my Asian parents and to myself that I was doing something right. I wasn’t just leaving a lucrative job and saying, “Fuck it. I’m just going to leave and work in a kitchen. I’m going to school again. I need some sort of education.” It turns out the shortest routes is in Paris at Le Cordon Bleu. It’s a three-month program. They call it an intensive course. It wasn’t the entire thing. I thought, “Why not go out there and see what it’s like?” Back then, it didn’t cost what it costs now. It’s insane now. Back then, for three months, it maybe cost me a couple thousand dollars.

I go to Le Cordon Bleu, and what’s funny is everything just made sense. The physical world just sort of changed my confidence. Everything sort of fit, and it was really strange. Granted, it’s not a professional kitchen, but just being in that environment and going through all these recipes – there’d be a demonstration and you’d cook a practical – it’s almost like a chemistry class. This just makes sense, and everything just flows, more than anything else in life at that point. I thought to myself, “Maybe there’s something to this. Maybe I should be cooking.”

What was your very first restaurant job after culinary school?

I was living in San Francisco prior to going to Paris, and I kind of understood the restaurant scene a little bit better than L.A., even though I’m from here. At that point, I had more disposable income. I was eating out more, so I was more familiar with the restaurants in general. I went out there and ended up getting a job at La Folie with Roland Passot, a French kitchen. It was intense. It was crazy. It was the first time I’d been in the weeds and in the shits, ticket after ticket after ticket, and, “Oh my god, what am I going to do? I’m sinking.” What’s crazy is I loved it. I fucking loved it. “There’s something absolutely wrong with you, but I love the camaraderie with all the cooks and this sense of immediacy.” You’ve got to get it done. You prep, prep, prep, you’ve got to get it done. We open the doors and service is going to start at 5:30. Ticket after ticket after ticket. And I loved it. I loved cooking, I loved learning about cooking to increase my technique. I learned to taste better. It’s something you learn. When I first started out, I was like, “How does he know that it’s missing this, this and this?” I can’t taste that yet, or I don’t know what to look for. Eventually, after practice, you know exactly what it is, and it becomes second nature.

What brought you back to L.A.?

From San Francisco, I decided to come back to L.A. because of my family. It’s time. I’d been living in all those other places for quite some time and I think it’s time to come back to L.A. When I came back to L.A., that’s when I got a job at Campanile.

So it was Campanile to Mozza?

No. From Campanile I went to New York and worked at Daniel. In my mind, I felt if you’re serious about your cooking career, you should work in San Francisco and New York at some point in your career. At that point, I had worked in San Francisco and was back here in L.A. and thought, “I’ve just got to go balls out. I’m young enough right now. I’m not really attached to much. Why don’t I just go out there?” When I got out there, I was just staying at a friend’s place. I had arranged for trails at different restaurants. There was nothing committed yet, and I’m just like, “I’m moving out there.”…I went to different restaurants to try out and the funny thing is, the first one I went to was Daniel. At that point, I read “The Fourth Star.” It’s a great book, and it’s the inner workings of Restaurant Daniel. I remember reading it, “It’s so intense there. I’m never going to work there.” Then I got there, “Wow, it is intense, and I have to work there, and I have to get my ass kicked.” It’s one of those things where I wanted it and knew I needed it for discipline and technique and to be in an environment where everyone’s really good at what they do. A lot of the guys I worked with, they’re amazing cooks, better than me. Of course. These guys kick ass, and it was great to be in that environment and to learn, or to even watch Daniel [Boulud]. He would just hop on the line, middle of service, Saturday night, cook like the rest of the cooks. Damn, that’s a lot of respect. Nancy [Silverton], when we opened Pizzeria Mozza, every single day, she was right next to us. To this day, I look at that: one day, I hope to do that. I want to be like them because I have so much respect for them. They’re on the line, doing it, and you can see they’re so committed and passionate.

In Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood, the red brick building that houses The Spice Table has become known as the go-to spot for the soulful flavors of Southeast Asia. With a menu highlighting some of his favorite dishes inspired by travels to Singapore and Vietnam, Chef Bryant Ng has cooked his way into the hearts his customers, critics and influential magazine editors. For Ng translation is more than words and language. It’s culture, food and flavor; Ng aims to capture travel experiences and bring them home.

Ng’s culinary career includes stints in kitchens that turned out elegant French preparations and authentic Italian dishes. When it came time to open his own place the flavors of his family heritage in Singapore and his wife’s Vietnamese roots evolved into one of the most celebrated food stories in Los Angeles, including glowing review by Pulitzer winner Jonathan Gold and his being named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs.

Later this Spring Ng’s adventures around the world and in the kitchen will come full circle in Singapore at the inaugural World Street Food Congress. Along with Anthony Bourdain, James Oseland and Jean-Georges Vongerichten Ng will join KF Seetoh on the council for the event in Singapore.

We stopped into The Spice Table mid-afternoon to find Ng stoking the fire at his customized grill setup—which includes a section designed specifically for making satay—to bring the perfect amount of smoke and char to his ribeyes, chickens, burgers and vegetables. While savoring the aromas from the grill, Ng shared his thoughts of the Street Food Congress, cooking and traveling through the streets of LA and the world.

How did the idea to plan a street food congress come about?

I met Seetoh the last time I was in Singapore. He told me about the congress and asked if I wanted to be involved. It’s about preserving culinary heritage. We talked about how the children of hawkers are not becoming hawkers. They are going into medicine or finance which is great, but we are losing a very important part of Singaporean heritage, which is the food. So what will happen when the older generation stops cooking and retires? It could disappear.

What’s the strategy for preserving it?

We need to open that dialogue. We need to get hawkers and street food professionals and people who are in large companies and other chefs like myself or people who are media personalities like Anthony Bourdain to discuss ways we can maintain culinary heritage. We hope to create incentives for the younger generation to go into the field. Singapore is not chef-driven it is food-driven. You don’t know who is cooking the food—it is just auntie and uncle back there. How do you make cooking sexy? How do you make it lucrative? How do you create financial incentives? How do we get the younger generation to say, I really want to go into cooking.

How have your travels influenced your menu at The Spice Table?

I love cooking. For me it’s about experimenting—coming back from a trip and coming up with these dishes that I love to eat. I want to share some of that street flavor. One time we were in Saigon and we went to a northern Vietnamese restaurant that is known for grilled chicken feet. It was the most beautiful thing: they were perfectly cooked, perfectly charred. It had a sweet flavor to it that took in all that smoke. What he does every morning is splits the chicken feet in half so that they have more surface area. When they grill it, it is perfectly fanned out. The flavors were so simple, but so spot on. I took that idea and flavor profile and put it into a chicken entrée here. This particular dish is also inspired by Campanile restaurant. I worked there about eight years ago. Now that the restaurant is gone, this is my ode to Campanile. They served a crispy flattened chicken over mashed potatoes with garlic confit and arugula. It was so simple, but everybody loved it. I wanted to take the flavor profiles I had in Vietnam and translate it to this dish. I make it with lemongrass, shallots, garlic, honey, fish sauce and chilies.

How do you translate the experience of standing in a night market in Singapore eating something off of a piece of tin foil to your restaurant menu?

When I eat something in Singapore or Vietnam I am trying to understand more than the ingredients. I am trying to capture, what I am feeling when I am eating. I taste the flavors, but there is more to it. There is the smoke. There is the attention to detail. So how do I bring it here and really be able to execute it the way it should be and give it respect? To me it is capturing that soul. Trying to understand it as best I can and translating it to dishes I make here.

Do you consciously include menu items that are handheld, like your kaya toast and fried chicken, to capture that texture and tactile experience of eating street food?

Absolutely. And also like the dish the Salted Duck Egg Crab Bee Hoon. It’s a whole crab. You have to commit. You have to crack the crab. It’s going to be messy, but that’s part of it. When you are out of the street, you eat the food as it is. That’s part of the beauty of it. I ate a couple versions of Crab Bee Hoon in Singapore. I try to capture the nuances of the flavors.

Is this part of the reason for your grill being inside the dining space, for your diners to smell the smoke and see the char?

This grill is very much a statement. Our front door is right there. You walk in and immediately see the grill. To me it is a commitment to a craft and the way we cook which is vey traditional with wood and charcoal. You see that. You smell that. You feel it. There is a literal and figurative warmth to it.

What were the modifications you made to this grill for it to be able to cook traditional satay?

If you look here there is a large gap between the coals and the cooking surface. We created this section to resemble those charcoal boxes you see all over Asia made for cooking grilled meats. The cooking surface is closer to the heat surface. What’s important is to get that char. You need it to caramelize to get the flavors to get in there. You need the smoke. I make lamb belly, chicken, beef and tripe satay. We’ve done sweetbreads.

Coming from a fine dining background at Mozza and Campanile, how does this environment, the grill in the middle, the brick walls and Vietnamese bird cages hanging from the ceiling tell your story?

Working in those places it was about learning good technique, learning how to cook and how kitchens and restaurants run and a good understanding of a professional kitchen. Here at The Spice Table it is about Southeast Asia. That is where my family is from. My mom is from Hong Kong. My dad’s side is from Singapore. My wife’s family is from Vietnam.

Besides Southeast Asia have you eaten street food in other countries? Can you share a food memory that sticks with you?

For my honeymoon we went to Paris, Barcelona and San Sebastian. The best thing we ate was this potato and leek pancake at a farmers market in Paris. A two Euro potato and leek pancake was better than any place we dined. That was the most memorable thing we ate. To this day that still inspires me. For me that was so simple, there was cheese in it, it was pan fried. It was beautiful. I think some of the best things are simple. We are a mom and pop shop. When people come in I want them to feel the heart and soul and love put into the food and service. Wherever we go I want to be able to capture that.

What inspires you to keep cooking?

My goals have changed. It has a lot to do with my conversations with Seetoh about the World Street Food Congress. When I opened The Spice Table it was simple—I just wanted to cook and have a restaurant to do the food that I wanted to do. Now I think more about how important it is to uphold this culinary heritage of Singapore. I want to go back there to learn more. I need to cook more and be somebody that can help carry the torch to uphold those traditions.

What are you most looking forward to during the conference?

I want to see what kind of impact this congress can have. We need it to be more than a feast with everyone patting ourselves on the back. If we truly want to make a difference then we have to make those connections, have a dialogue and make an action plan.

]]>http://www.thespicetable.com/2013/03/22/interview-bryant-ng-of-the-spice-table/feed/0After Crispy Pig Ears, 10 Trends for 2013http://www.thespicetable.com/2013/01/02/after-crispy-pig-ears-10-trends-for-2013/
http://www.thespicetable.com/2013/01/02/after-crispy-pig-ears-10-trends-for-2013/#commentsThu, 03 Jan 2013 01:07:50 +0000adminhttp://www.thespicetable.com/?p=946IN our newly omnivorous nation, restaurant trends often have the same viral spread and short life span as boy bands — witness 2011’s crispy pig ears and sea buckthorn berries. Eating around the country on reporting trips in 2012, I saw food lovers everywhere embracing new interpretations of farm-to-table and nose-to-tail as fast as they came along.

But along with the flashes in the pan, I saw some new developments that seem to have both legs and merit.

]]>http://www.thespicetable.com/2013/01/02/after-crispy-pig-ears-10-trends-for-2013/feed/0In Singapore, Food Future With No Pasthttp://www.thespicetable.com/2012/11/07/in-singapore-food-future-with-no-past/
http://www.thespicetable.com/2012/11/07/in-singapore-food-future-with-no-past/#commentsThu, 08 Nov 2012 00:08:16 +0000adminhttp://www.thespicetable.com/?p=909So if I regularly have damn good burgers, I appreciate a dense, well packed patty, and the toasty sesame-seed-speckled buns, or if I enjoy a pizza with a crusty yet soft gummy dough layered atop with sinful pastrami, whatever else and oozy cheese, or if I gush over a true blue southern fried chicken with biscuits plus a pulled pork sandwich, would that make me partial to American food culture? ( I do like them all, and more, if you are wondering!)

Or if, I gave up 2 years of my adult life to slave in a little respectable Japanese omakase restaurant and learnt, first hand and in my face, all the secrets of the Japanese kitchen, would I be regarded as a soldier of their food culture? Could I tout and hawk comforting and even grandiose versions of all those iconic flavours and be respected as an advocate and their culinary ambassador? I doubt so, especially in my case: I would not have that all-important element of soul to complete that journey. I would not have that pure local childhood joy of wonderment, that virgin innocent first time connection with the devilishly alluring smoked BBQ ribs as a naïve and curious little kid. These pure experiences would easily mould my impressionistic palate and root me to the culinary heritage of the land.

I had the pleasure to spending time recently with Bryant Ng and his ardently wired-in wife Kim Luu. They are the folks behind The Spice Table, a Singapore-Asian-inspired restaurant in LA. He was christened Food & Wine’s Best New Chef this year. His family’s DNA has some Singapore culture and food heritage but he’s all bred and born in the USA. They made a “rediscovery” trip back to Southeast Asia to “pay homage” and reconnect with its food culture. Honestly, I wouldn’t know how many trips he has to make before he can surface for air and say fait accompli, or in local speak here, “ho say liao” (all nicely done). We did the usual: tore into mean laksa, bak kut teh, salted egg yolk prawn tempura, white pepper crabs, satay beehoon, chicken rice etc. It was an amazing graze.

But it would be hard to connect, let alone reconnect, if the line was not linked in the first place. If one hadn’t had humble childhood peasant pleasures like a bowl of plain rice porridge with half a boiled salted egg — and been consumed by that purity — it would be hard (if not impossible) to even think of introducing that earthy and salty yolk as a sauce for fried crabs, or even calamari. If you can’t taste a feeling, a memory or a word, you are at best a culinary anthropologist, struggling as a chef. Damian De Silva, who junked his western culinary school training to go back to his comfort basics at his brand new Immigrants Gastrobar in Singapore, says you just can’t teach recipes, “you gotta teach feel.” Damian offers “lost” dishes like Eurasian Feng, a tediously done offal stew and Hakka roasted intestines, to pair with Japanese whiskeys.

But I think Bryant has an edge; he is acutely curious and openly religious with his food. His has the kind of roots that tells him just how sacred the laksa rempah is, the blasphemy of using lemon instead of calamansi lime in chicken rice chilli and the redemption in authenticity. His menu reeks of Southeast Asia, dishes like beef rendang, kaya toast, grilled pig’s tail (reminds me of the vanishing Teochew Lo Mei), BBQ chicken wings accented with daun kesom, cha kway teow, Hainanese chicken rice and kon loh mee.

He is coming back again for another exploration trip soon, and I think he knows it’s not just about finding flavors and recipes but finding gastro-soul in this city of unique chow. But Bryant, do consider a hop over to Indonesia, to “second” cities like Solo and Bandung. You’ll be surprised just how connected you may be to these strange lands in Southeast Asia — so as long as the yearning and hunger to approach the future with the past in tow is calling.

Bryant Ng is the chef-owner of the Spice Table in downtown Los Angeles, the Singaporean-Vietnamese restaurant he opened last year with the help of his wife, Kim. Ng grew up in the restaurant business; his parents owned a Los Angeles restaurant called Wok Way, and his grandparents owned a Cantonese-Polynesian spot in Santa Monica in the ’60s called Bali Hai. After graduating from UCLA with a microbiology degree, he decided to pursue a cooking career and attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Ng has worked at Daniel in New York and Campanile andPizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles. He recently was named a best new chef by Food & Wine magazine.

What’s coming up next on your menu? I’m heading over to Singapore and Vietnam in a few weeks to visit family and be inspired by the region. It’s been about a year and a half since I’ve been back, and it’s about that time to add some perspective and invigorate. Lately I’ve been cooking traditional dishes I love to eat, like char kway teow (flat rice noodle dish with pork, bean sprouts, egg and cockles when I have them, clams when I don’t)…. I’ll be doing some whole crab dishes, like chilecrab, salted egg yolk crab and even a chilled crab (I love chilled seafood).

Latest ingredient obsession? All things seafood. I recently had on the menu a raw and fried geoduck dish. The raw portion was served with a fragrant chile oil made with garlic and preserved vegetables, and the fried portion was coated in ground panko and served with a black pepper lime sauce. I love geoduck, not only because it’s the most phallic looking creature on the planet (it looks phallic on the siphon portion and the base), but also because it’s delicious. The siphon eaten raw is sweet, briny, meaty and crisp. The mantle portion is like the best fried clams you’ve ever had, the ideal flavor and texture.

What restaurant do you find yourself going to again and again? Dai Ho in Temple City. This noodle house has a very concise menu of noodle dishes as well as other veg, tofu and meat sides. Their spicy beef noodles, dan dan noodles, minced beef noodles are superior versions of those dishes. The noodles are cooked perfectly, and the broths and condiments are well seasoned and flavorful. People complain that they are too expensive at $8 or $9 a bowl when they can go somewhere else and pay $6. To me, the extra $2 to $3 is definitely worth the quality that I can taste.

The one piece of kitchen equipment you can’t live without? This is going to sound like a pretentious chef answer, but I’ll say it anyway: my palate. The palate is the one thing that people in kitchens take for granted and underutilize. Yet it’s so important. The hardest thing for a restaurant to achieve is consistency, and the only way to do that is to taste your food. That’s why a friend of yours, whose tastes you trust, loves a particular restaurant but when you went there it sucked. The chefs and the cooks weren’t tasting that day.

The Spice Table
The name of this eatery isn’t referring to racks of saffron, oregano, or parsley — its Southeast Asian grub will set your mouth on fire! And the cheeseburger is no exception. With ground short-rib, shallot mayo, sambal, curry-pickled cucumbers, lettuce, tomato, and Kraft American cheese, you’ll def be thirsty for a signature Singaporean lager, Tiger Beer, to wash all that seasoning down.

]]>http://www.thespicetable.com/2012/08/22/take-a-bite-out-of-l-a-s-tastiest-burger/feed/0LA does Friday night righthttp://www.thespicetable.com/2012/08/13/la-does-friday-night-right/
http://www.thespicetable.com/2012/08/13/la-does-friday-night-right/#commentsMon, 13 Aug 2012 19:33:29 +0000adminhttp://www.thespicetable.com/?p=824One of the best things that can happen when you travel is visiting one city and feeling like you’ve taken a trip all over the world. Another of the best things is visiting a city with so much swagger that it could give other cities, even your own, ideas on how to evolve.

So Los Angeles deserves our thanks for one of the finest Friday nights we’ve had this year.

We started downtown at the Los Angeles Food & Wine festival’s Andrew Zimmern-hosted Asian night market. Zimmern was actually cooking a Flintstones-sized rib there. Yu Bo flew in from Chengdu to make ma la dumplings steps from the Staples Center. Kogi BBQ parked its truck. Between Kogi and the Fukuburger chicken and donuts, the grilled tuna from the Picca/Mo-Chica crew (who do indeed remind diners of the overlaps in Peruvian and Asian cuisine) and the skate with sambal from the Spice Table’s Bryant Ng, LA’s hot crop of flavor-over-frills chefs were representing their city well.

But after circling the night market a couple times, we left for dinner. Though other chefs warned us that maybe we should visit another night — given that Ng, his wife Kim Luu-Ng and key members of his staff were all at the night market — we headed over to the Spice Table, the Little Tokyo restaurant that specializes in Southeast Asian food.

This is the food of the streets, food that fuses ideas from many countries, food you find in hawker stands where you sweat through your clothes while you sit outside and eat huge bowls of soup and mounds of rice as you watch old men grill meat on charcoal.

Even without Ng in the house, the Spice Table was superb. The chicken and beef satays were tender, moist, full of Asian flavors and charred exactly right. The Hainanese chicken over rice and the laksa, with its rich coconut-seafood gravy, satisfied constant cravings we’ve had since visiting Singapore. We also loved the fried cauliflower with fish sauce — crispy, light and funky. And the kaya toast reminded us that coconut jam on buttered toast with an egg/soy sauce/white pepper dipping sauce would work just fine for breakfast, dinner or dessert. Think of this as the Southeast Asian version of salted caramel.

After dinner, we headed to the Sayers Club in Hollywood. To get inside, you walk through a Papaya King and an unmarked yellow door, but this is no PDT-style speakeasy. It’s a cozy room that feels like a full-on nightclub/performance space, and it’s part of Sam Nazarian’s SBE empire.

It was jazz/hip-hop night (the Sayers Club often has rock nights, too), and DJ Bizzy kept the crowd bouncing, smiling and drinking with a smart, soulful playlist that had us at Rob Base and Run-DMC. (One night later, we saw the versatile Bizzy playing Calvin Harris and Avicii at David Arquette’s Bootsy Bellows club while Arquette himself put on a bizarre, interpretive puppet show.)

The Sayers Club crowd was ultra-diverse, with a mix of cultures, fashions and ages that you just can’t get from the single-minded “image promoters” less creative nightclubs hire. That led to an in-the-moment, of-the-moment vibe where people were actually having fun. Unlike the bored, distracted folks you often find at big bottle-service clubs with dozens of “VIP tables,” iPhone use was kept to a minimum.

And when a band led by Tony Royster Jr., perhaps best known as Jay-Z’s drummer, hopped on stage, the appreciative, attentive crowd danced and clapped and raised their glasses. There were all-American-looking guys dressed up in white suits and exotic ladies purposefully dressed down in denim on the dance floor for every single song. There were short Asian gals in high-high heels cavorting with tall handsome fellas who looked like they had just put on a fedora after playing pickup basketball.

This is what we wish Fort Greene was really like. Why isn’t there a spot like this in New York, steps from the new Barclays Center arena, curated by, say, Yasiin Bey (can we just keep calling you Mos Def, please?).

Royster and friends play at the Sayers Club every two weeks. Jay-Z opens up the Barclays Center with eight concerts in September/October and will become even more of a Brooklyn icon when the Nets start their season. Let’s make this happen in Brooklyn, Hov.